Attorney General Ken Paxton has called for acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock to be removed from office, in a fiery social media tirade responding to a letter Hancock sent accusing Paxton of falling short in his efforts to stop the spread of Muslim-affiliated groups in Texas.
Paxton called Hancock an “incompetent loser” and “embarrassment” to the position of the state’s chief financial officer in a social media post late Tuesday. He called for Gov. Greg Abbott to remove Hancock from office and replace him with the GOP nominee for comptroller, Don Huffines. Abbott did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hancock, a former state senator, was appointed by Abbott in June, after Glenn Hegar left to become chancellor of the Texas A&M system.
Paxton’s beef with Hancock goes back years — Hancock was one of two Republican state senators to vote to impeach Paxton on some of the charges levied by the House in 2023.
“He failed to take me down during impeachment, and his career is over,” Paxton posted on social media Wednesday night. “It’s time for him to be fired.”
This recent dustup started after Hancock sent a letter, obtained by Texas Bullpen, to Paxton’s office, criticizing its legal strategy in a case centering on whether Islamic schools can receive funds through the state’s new school voucher program.
Hancock, who oversees the voucher program, has pushed to exclude schools with ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group, which Abbott has declared a terrorist organization. CAIR has sued, rejecting any ties to terrorist organizations and saying the label is defamatory and false.
Paxton released a non-binding legal opinion in January saying Hancock has the authority to block certain schools from participating in the program if they are “illegally tied to terrorists or foreign adversaries.”
Four Muslim parents and three Islamic private school providers sued over the exclusion, noting that hundreds of non-Islamic schools had been accepted without issue. A federal judge sided with them in an initial ruling, ordering the state to extend the voucher application deadline and consider the schools’ request to join the program.
Hancock said in the letter that Paxton’s office had not made clear to the judge that there were connections between one of the schools, Houston Quran Academy, and the Muslim Brotherhood.
“The court cannot protect against threats it does not know exist,” Hancock wrote.
Houston Quran Academy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the letter, Hancock also broadly criticized Paxton for not using all the tools at his disposal to go after groups he says are affiliated with Muslim terrorist groups. He called for Paxton to sue Houston Quran Academy to revoke their corporate charter, and said Paxton’s office had not yet taken steps to implement a new state law preventing “foreign adversaries” from buying land in Texas.
“Texas cannot be asleep at the wheel as radical Islam spreads,” Hancock wrote.
Hancock’s office declined to comment.
This is the second time in a week that a fellow Republican has questioned Paxton’s legal strategy in high-profile litigation. In a recent legal filing, Abbott noted to the Texas Supreme Court that Paxton had rushed a lawsuit against a Harris County program offering legal aid for undocumented immigrants.
“This emergency — whether artificial or sincere — predictably compressed review before the Fifteenth Court,” Abbott’s lawyers wrote. “Any shortcomings in the lower court’s decision here can easily be attributed to the challenges posed by expedited review.”